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Meet Indra Sofian of Sora Schools in Dunwoody

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Indra Sofian.

Indra, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I’m from a small town in northwest Georgia. Growing up, my life was pretty much just school. I studied all the time, did extra classes to practice for the SAT, spent my Saturdays learning Chinese, and the like. My whole world was my academics. All I knew at the time was that if I studied hard, earned good grades, and got accepted into a good college, I would be successful. I ended up attending Georgia Tech. It was an eye-opening experience! It wasn’t my classes, though, that were critical to my development. It was everything I did outside of them.

My first company I started at the beginning of college–Elevate Media, a digital marketing agency–taught me more about business than any of the classes I was taking. I led a student organization called Startup Exchange and got my first real lesson in leadership and management. I became a venture partner at Contrary Capital and learned about the world of technology startups and venture capital.

Towards the end of my college career, I had a conversation late at night with a couple of my friends at Tech. We were complaining about high school. We felt that it didn’t actually prepare us for the real world, that we wasted so much time just studying for and taking tests that ultimately didn’t matter, that we wished we had been able to explore our interests outside of our studies. As a joke, we pulled up a whiteboard and started writing down all the things we would have if we ran our own high school.

But after that conversation, we continued talking. We shared our notes and thoughts about books we had read about the school, the science of learning, and the education system. We started talking to teachers, school founders, and other relevant people about their problems with the way schools are today. We realized that there were a lot of problems with the design of schools today, particularly high school, from the way we’re taught to what we’re taught. Ultimately, we decided we wanted to solve the problems we had identified.

Soon after, we started Sora Schools–a free live, virtual, project-based high school where students explore their interests and future careers. We got the word out about our high school and enrolled the first students for our inaugural year. We raised money from strategic investors in education and local angels in Georgia. We hired our first educators. Then, in September of 2019, we officially launched Sora and held our first day of school.

Has it been a smooth road?
In school, I learned to deal with very clear expectations, a simple system of progression, and a safety net if I failed. Starting a company is anything but that. We ran into so many problems just getting Sora off the ground. We had no idea how to start a high school–it’s not like there were articles like “5 tips to starting a high school” floating around the Internet. We had to figure out marketing channels, discover what parents truly wanted for their kids and their education, work our way with regulations, and so much more.

Fun fact: Sora initially started out as a physical high school. But, a few major obstacles got in the way of that. Firstly, we received a lot of interest in Sora from prospective parents, but they were very spread out around the greater Atlanta area. Real estate and getting a space for the school turned out to be a much more complicated and longer process than we had anticipated, so much so that we realized we weren’t actually sure if we could start Sora in the timeline we planned for. Lastly, raising money was horrendously difficult. We banged our heads against a wall and tried to fundraise for about five months before we finally realized that it might not actually be possible for us to start Sora in the way we had imagined it.

It was possibly the lowest point of my life for me. There I was, a pre-product founder who had promised a lot to my first customers–parents who were trusting their kids’ educational futures to us–and we really couldn’t start the school. It was awful.

But we dug in and brainstormed how we could figure out a solution to the problems we were encountering. Ultimately, we realized it was the physical space that was the center of our problems. As a thought experiment, we pretended that we didn’t need the physical space. Could we start and run a high school virtually? What would that be like? Could we do everything we needed to do online?

To make a long story short, we figured out that it was possible. We pivoted to become a virtual high school, and everything changed for the better.

Tell us more about the business.
Sora Schools is a free live, virtual, project-based high school where students explore their interests and future careers. The traditional school model is not engaging. Students often miss the relevance of traditional classwork, leaving them bored and uninspired. We’re on a mission to reimagine high school for the better. In our program, we use an individualized, project-based learning approach where we work 1:1 with students to design projects based around their interests, making it both relevant to their aspirations and the skills they will need to succeed in the workforce. There are no classes, lectures, or even tests in high school. Instead, students are building video games, writing fantasy novels, conducting scientific research, and so much more.

We constantly think about how to prepare our students for their future careers. We bring mentors with industry experience to talk to students about their work and expose them to new fields. Through our Work + Study program, we connect students with part-time internships to get real-world work experience that also allows them to go to Sora for free.

Overall, students are part of a community of enthusiastic young learners who all push each other to excel, collaborate on projects, and support others when help is needed. By the end of the program, students are self-directed, thoughtful individuals who are prepared for higher education and their future careers. Ultimately, our goal is to accelerate every student towards their wildest dreams.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
The first wave of online education brought content online. YouTube was a powerful platform allowing anyone to upload educational content online for free. Khan Academy brought textbook lessons and lectures online. Then, the second wave of online education brought curriculum and credentials to the digital world–that was companies like Udemy, Coursera, and the MOOCs. The next wave of education will be organizations and platforms that bring more than just content and curriculum. They’ll bring the most important facet of a good education: community. In the next 5 to 10 years, especially in the context of the sudden push into online education due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the online education industry will absolutely explode in growth. Expect to see more live classes and educational activities through video or virtual reality, the rise of educational influencers who command their own following and set their own price and curriculum, and new platforms and tools that will enable these trends to even happen.

Pricing:

  • Full-Time Program at Sora Schools: Free through Work + Study, or $800 per month
  • Part-Time Program at Sora Schools: Free through Work + Study, or $500 per month

Contact Info:

Image Credit:
Indra Sofian

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